U.S. Arabs Move to Bar Visits by Shamir

Just three days before Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir is to arrive here for high-level talks, the nation’s largest Arab-American lobby announced Friday that it is suing the U.S. government for release of documents that allegedly would link Shamir to terrorist activities four decades ago.

With dim prospects for success, the 18,000-member American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee is seeking to have Shamir barred from the United States for his actions during the Zionist struggle for creation of a Jewish state, making him persona non grata inside U.S. borders as a private citizen.

“The United States has sufficient information upon which to act” now in banning Shamir from the country under the Immigration and Naturalization Act, committee President Abdeen Jabara contended at a press conference, as his group met in suburban Arlington, Va., for its annual convention.

33 Grounds for Exclusion

The immigration act lists terrorism among 33 grounds for exclusion from the United States.

Despite pressure from Arab lobbyists such as the committee, there remains virtually no chance that the U.S. government would put the name of the prime minister of one of its strongest allies on a so-called “watch list” of excluded foreigners.

Nonetheless, the release of the reported documents--sought by the American-Arab committee in a suit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court here--might prove embarrassing to Israel at a time when the country is already under international criticism for its stern handling of conflict with Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Jabara conceded that placing Shamir on the “watch list” would not prevent his making official visits to this country, as he will do again next week at the specific invitation of the American government.

U.S. government officials declined comment on the suit. Ran Kuriel, a spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington, said: “This is a propaganda ploy that doesn’t dignify a response from us. This is not serious, but they’re free to do what they want.”

Denies Ulterior Motives

Jabara denied that the suit was an attempt to injure Shamir’s reputation just as the prime minister arrives in the United States for talks on the continuing tensions in the Middle East. He said that the committee has been considering seeking the documents from the U.S. departments of Justice and State, among others, for more than a year.

The committee’s suit alleges that Shamir, as head of the Stern Gang, an underground Zionist group, was involved in the attempted assassinations of two high British officials in 1944, Harold MacMichael in Tel Aviv, and Walter Guinness in Cairo; in the September, 1948, slaying of U.N. mediator Count Folke Bernadotte in Jerusalem, and in the April, 1948, killings of 254 unarmed civilians in the Arab village of Deir Yassin.

“Shamir has never renounced his participation” in the Stern Gang and other “terrorist organizations which were responsible for death and injury to innocent persons,” the suit argues. It asserted that the requested documents are needed to determine “the United States’ knowledge of Shamir’s criminal past” and its “failure” to bar him from the country.